Communication Faculty Publications and PresentationsCopyright (c) 2016 Boise State University All rights reserved.http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs
Recent documents in Communication Faculty Publications and Presentationsen-usThu, 27 Oct 2016 09:26:36 PDT3600“He’s Like a Brother”: The Social Construction of Satisfying Cross-Sex Friendship Roleshttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/92
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/92Thu, 06 Oct 2016 08:45:05 PDT
Unlike most forms of relating, cross-sex friendships do not inherit pre-established social roles that influence norms and form expectations. Instead, members of cross-sex friendships must construct an understanding of their relationship and find the language with which to explain it to others. This study identifies the role(s) commonly created or adopted for cross-sex friendship and determines which constructs of cross-sex friendship are correlated with relational satisfaction. Study 1 used in-depth interviews (N = 40) and qualitative analysis to discover roles with which cross-sex friends identify. Study 2 utilized a close-ended questionnaire (N = 206) to assess the relative frequency of the role types, whether men and women differed in their role selection, and whether role type is related to relational satisfaction. Both samples consisted of college students in the western United States. Results indicate that women most commonly construct their male–female friendship as a sibling relationship, and men most frequently label their relationship “just friends,” and both of these ways of constructing the relationship are related to a high level of friendship satisfaction. Participants who described their friendship as a romantic relationship had a significantly lower level of friendship satisfaction. The implication of these results for understanding the social construction of cross-sex friendship is discussed.
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Heidi ReederPositioning for Battle: The Ideological Struggle Over Senator Joseph McCarthy and the American Establishmenthttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/91
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/91Fri, 01 Jul 2016 14:55:10 PDT
Debates over Senator Joseph McCarthy and about the American Establishment illustrated the issues at the heart of the ideological battle that took place among conservative and liberal intellectuals during the 1950s and 1960s. Drawing on published materials and archival sources, this study explored the publication of four prominent books about the senator in the 1950s and intellectuals’ reactions to each and the connection of the McCarthy debate to discussion in the late 1950s and early 1960s of the Establishment. It found a direct relationship between the ideological debate over McCarthy and the development of the concept of an American Establishment.
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Julie B. LaneSexual and Relational Health Messages for Women Who Have Sex with Womenhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/90
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/90Fri, 29 Apr 2016 12:06:32 PDT
Although much attention has been paid to sexual risk and negotiation of sexual risk-reducing behaviors between women and their male partners, less research has been done on sexual health communication aimed at or engaged in by women who have sex with women (WSW) (Bailey, Farquhar, Owen, & Mangtani, 2004; Feathers, Marks, Mindel, & Estcourt, 2000). There is a misconception among WSW, and the public in general, that WSW’s relatively low rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and low risk for STI transmission from female-to-female sexual contact make it less necessary to address safer sex practices among WSW. In fact, WSW are still at risk for many STIs, bacterial, viral, and protozoal infections that have long-term health consequences, such as human papillomavirus (HPV), which can be easily transmitted through female-to-female sexual contact (CDC, 2012). Further, most WSW have either a history or current practice of having sex with men; 53% to 99% of WSW in one study reported having had sex with men and had plans to continue the practice in the future, therefore increasing their risk of STI contraction and transmission beyond what would be expected of a women who has sex exclusively with women (Diamant, Schuster, McGuigan, et al., 1999). More specifically, there is a need to prioritize sexual health as it is framed by cultural, political, and relational factors—in other words, observing how sexual health is framed within the dominant discourse. To this end, we use standpoint theory to frame data from an online survey and a content analysis of sexuality texts targeted at WSW. This research gives voice to how WSW communicate with their peers, partners, and healthcare providers about sexuality.
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Sandra L. Faulkner et al.Grounding Communication Studies in Enlightenment Criticality: Scaling Up Theoretical and Dialectical Ambitionhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/89
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/89Fri, 22 Apr 2016 09:51:11 PDT
The Enlightenment produced theories of great ambition that aimed to break from dogma, to put reason in the hands of humanity and to imagine possible futures and then pursue them. The Enlightenment also brought devastation to humanity in connection with research practices that grew both abstract and narrow. Communication and media studies developed largely outside theoretical debates surrounding restricted ambitions for the scale of conceptual work, settling research into enclaved practices. This article argues for a critical return to Enlightenment criticality where an evolutionary perspective meets other ambitious attempts to reach the scale of a philosophical anthropology in which “theory” aims beyond the particular and the present. Three exemplars that lead to a convergence of that aim are discussed, by characterising the work of Jürgen Habermas, Harold Adams Innis and Thomas Piketty.
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Ed McLuskieInteraction Dispersed, Participation Compromised: The Report, the Field, and the Struggle for "Communicative Rights"http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/88
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/88Mon, 26 Oct 2015 10:21:11 PDT
Thirty-five years after its release, UNESCO’s Many Voices, One World (“The Report”) remains a generation’s hope that communication bears a relation to democracy down to the concrete interactions of the people. The hope was and is compromised by a parallel history and prehistory of the field called “communication” and “media studies.” Participation-as-audiences morphed but still promote versions of “interaction” linked to the latest technologies—thus accommodating economic and cultural power as media- and info-power. Emancipation by new-tech adoption define “communicative interaction” in terms reminiscent of modernization research exporting the West to the rest, today to all. The idea that communicative interaction could thrive within such frames compromised “The Report,” leaving the idea of democratic participation subject to recurring myths about the democratizing power of “the new.” Reflecting a legacy of conceits since “development” migrated into the field called “communication,” media- and info-centric orientations instrumentalise “interaction” and “participation” in a marketplaced world. There, many voices remain situated in the capitalist promise of potential while still-salient definitions of “communication,” “information,” and “democracy” frustrate “The Report’s” aim of a right to communicate, an aim where political consequence suits interactive and authentic publics defining otherwise mediated times.
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Ed McLuskieMedia Literacy in Action?: What Are We Teaching in Introductory College Media Studies Courses?http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/87
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/87Fri, 26 Jun 2015 12:11:30 PDT
An introductory media studies course is a staple of post-secondary education. What are instructors teaching in this course, and to what extent are the principles of media literacy education being incorporated into this likely home? This article reports the findings of a small survey of instructors, who describe aspects of their course content and pedagogy. Media literacy appears to provide a basic foundation in most cases, though instructors struggle with structural constraints. Findings suggest that more focus should be placed on teaching the political and economic contexts of media, and that instructors should embrace active learning and creative engagement.
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Seth AshleyMaking the Case for War: A Comparative Analysis of CNN and BBC Coverage of Colin Powell’s Presentation to the United Nations Security Councilhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/86
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/86Mon, 01 Jun 2015 10:45:10 PDT
The normative role of journalism in democracy is well established: democracy depends on news media to facilitate self-government. But theories of the press point to structural limitations that inhibit the democratic ideal. To examine this contradiction, this article offers a comparative analysis of online news coverage by CNN and BBC of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations Security Council on 5 February 2003. Ethnographic content analysis is used to examine the coverage and to consider each outlet’s broad institutional context. The article concludes that structural limitations are less of a hindrance at the BBC, which is better situated to enhance rational–critical dialogue and democratic self-governance through inclusion of a greater diversity of sources and a wider array of opinion.
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Seth AshleyExtending Critical Pedagogies: Attending to Economic Communication and Inspiring Critical Engagementhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/85
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/85Mon, 18 May 2015 08:34:59 PDT
Twenty-first-century capitalism has been characterized by chaos and rapid change, including global consolidation of ownership, financialization, economic crises, and eco-system collapse. Slow economic growth (outside of finance) coupled with increased market pressure have motivated continuous corporate re-organization involving outsourcing, contract employment, part-time labor, and similar cost-reduction practices. Consequently, workers in Western economies have fewer economic opportunities and American economic pessimism deepens (O’Connor, 2014) as too many workers and university graduates face temporary and/or part-time low-wage service jobs. As such, if the ways we teach organizational communication are to become more influential, the content and methods of our teaching must be expanded to offer meaningful critique of economic discourses influencing the constitution of organizations while providing useful ways to critically engage the complexities of contemporary organizational life. Although critical organizational communication research has addressed many workplace changes shaped by characteristics of late U.S. capitalism, the discipline has been less attentive to corporate communication and communication about corporations extending beyond employer–employee interactions. Without this guiding research, organizational communication education has been less inclined to focus on economic communication constituting the political systems that shape organizational structures, operations, and employee–employer relations.
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John G. McClellan et al.Forum Introduction: Promoting the Field Through Organizational Communication Pedagogyhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/84
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/84Fri, 01 May 2015 14:30:46 PDT
Organizational communication scholars have frequently discussed ways to promote the field by making communicative approaches to organization more useful and meaningful for scholars, organizational participants, and our communities. For instance, a 2002 Management Communication Quarterly (MCQ) forum discussed ways to translate our scholarship into meaningful practice by extending our research to a wider variety of audiences (Trethewey, 2002). Furthermore, a 2005 MCQ forum reflected on the “golden era” of the 1980s (Barker, 2005) and how the field can continue to progress by developing “distinctive theory that responds to pressing interdisciplinary problems in unique ways” (Kuhn, 2005, p. 626). And a 2007 MCQ forum discussed how we can promote the field by moving beyond the traditional boundaries of our scholarship and partnering with various publics to address important issues facing our communities (Krone & Harter, 2007). Although these forums provided useful insights into how we can enhance the relevance of communicative approaches to organization, explicit discussion as to how our undergraduate teaching can enhance the legitimacy and relevance of the field has been largely absent from these conversations. As such, this forum explores how our pedagogical approaches can increase the influence of organizational communication by better aligning our distinct theoretical perspectives, research findings, and applied practices with our undergraduate teaching.
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Matthew L. Sanders et al.Constructing the "Quality of Life" City: "Boise Is Best"http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/83
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/83Wed, 29 Apr 2015 11:50:18 PDT
Boise has been awarded many accolades in city rankings over the past decade. Between 2004 and 2012, Boise has appeared on lists that deem it a top healthy city; a top music city; a top turnaround town; a great place for paddling; a top adventure town; a best place to retire; a most physically active city; a most underrated city; a top college football town; a top city for green building; a top bike-friendly city; a best city for raising kids; a best city for business, careers, and economic growth; a most inventive city; a top undiscovered market; a top "super city of the future"; a "Sportstown USA"; and a best city to live, work, and play. In addition, it has been said to have some of the nation's best urban parks, workplaces for commuters, and carbon footprint. The sources of these rankings range from Time, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, CNN Money, and MSN to Sports Illustrated, National Geographic Adventure, Parenting, and Kiplinger's Personal Finance.1 Each of the rankings may be read as a "text" reflecting a discourse2 that shapes the ways people come to know Boise. Whether people have never seen Boise or whether they have lived in Boise their whole lives, these texts guide everyone to see the city as having some attributes that are deemed more important than others. Quality-of-life discourses, in particular, have become ways of reflecting what desirable cities should entail; such discourses presented Boise in glowing terms.
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erin daina mcclellanA Less Than Perfect Game, in a Less Than Perfect Place: The Critical Turn in Baseball Filmhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/82
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/82Fri, 24 Apr 2015 14:40:59 PDTHe can't speak much English, but that's the beauty of baseball. If he can go to his right and hit the broad side of a barn, that'll do all his talking for him. — Big Leaguer, 1953

This reassuring voice-over, in reference to New York Giants minor league prospect Chuy Ramon Santiago Aguilar, sums up nicely fundamental tenet of baseball ideology: race, ethnicity, and cultural heritage do not matter. All are welcome to participate in the national pastime. All will be treated equally. All that matters is how one plays the game. Such has been the promise of America, as well, articulated in the values and aspirations of this, its national pastime.

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Marshall G. Most et al.A Historical Comparison of the Social Origins of Broadcasting Policy, 1896–1920http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/81
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/81Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:21:35 PDT
Using the United States and Great Britain as a comparative case study, this article employs a historical framework to consider the broad array of social, cultural, political, and economic contexts that led to divergent outcomes in the early development of broadcasting policy. This comparative historical analysis reveals the causal chains formed before the 1920s despite a period of post-war contingency. As a policy option, government control was removed in the United States but stayed in place in Britain after the war. This comparative approach can help to explain policy outcomes and inform modern policy debates.
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Seth AshleyMeasuring News Media Literacyhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/80
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/80Fri, 20 Mar 2015 09:12:14 PDT
News media literacy refers to the knowledge and motivations needed to identify and engage with journalism. This study measured levels of news media literacy among 500 teenagers using a new scale measure based on Potter’s model of media literacy and adapted to news media specifically. The adapted model posits that news media literate individuals think deeply about media experiences, believe they are in control of media’s influence, and have high levels of basic knowledge about media content, industries and effects. Based on measures developed to assess news media literacy, highly news literate teens were found to be more intrinsically motivated to consume news, more skeptical and more knowledgeable about current events than their less news literate counterparts.
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Adam Maksi et al.Scaffolding Curation: Developing Digital Competencies in Media Literacy Educationhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/79
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/79Thu, 22 Jan 2015 14:03:48 PST
This chapter focuses on the concept of curation as a student- and creation-driven pedagogical tool to enhance digital and media literacy education. Specifically, it will unpack the phenomenon of curation as a pedagogical model for enhancing civic engagement, community, and purpose within social media platforms. Online curation—an increasingly common way to refer to the act of organizing various content into cohesive online stories—has taken numerous forms in recent years. Media organizations are increasingly integrating such tools into their web presence, most recently seen by the New York Times, NPR and the Washington Post utilizing Storify curation software for multimedia stories; and Al Jazeera, CNN and others integrating Twitter into their regular online programming. Curation is also being explored through remix—the sharing, repurposing, or re-appropriating of content online—as a function of creative commons and copyright, and in terms of cultural production and social structure. This chapter will build a framework for curation as it builds on existing models for digital and media education and remix culture. It will develop curation as a foundational media education competence to teach students about responsibility, purpose, and participation in social media spaces.
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Paul Mihailidis et al.The Sociology of Media System Structure: Communication Policy and the “Double Movement”http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/78
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/78Thu, 22 Jan 2015 10:58:11 PST
Karl Polanyi’s concept of a “double movement” has been used to describe the protectionist measures taken by governments to mitigate damage caused by the expansion of markets. Through a lens of political economy and historical institutionalism, this article uses Polanyi’s framework to examine competing notions of the public interest as exemplified by the socially constructed nature of American and British broadcasting and the legitimating discourse that produced divergent outcomes. A historical analysis points to a decline of the double movement in communication policy, particularly in the U.S., and lends support to calls for noncommercial, public media structures and increased regulation of communication industries.
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Seth AshleyAmending Equal Time: Explaining Institutional Change in American Communication Policyhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/77
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/77Fri, 19 Dec 2014 13:57:28 PST
This study explains the history of a 1959 amendment to the 1934 Communications Act through the lens of historical institutionalism. The amendment created broad exemptions for newscasts, documentaries, interviews, and news events, triggering the equal time provision for candidates for public office. While this study offers a variety of new empirical details, the chief goal is explanation based on an examination of historical mechanisms—path dependence, critical junctures, agglomeration, asymmetries of power, reinforcement of expectations, and temporal sequencing—that shaped the policy options leading up to the amendment.
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Tim P. Vos et al.“Deep Interdisciplinarity” as Critical Pedagogy: Teaching at the Intersections of Urban Communication and Public Place and Spacehttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/76
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/76Wed, 03 Dec 2014 14:22:28 PST
Interdisciplinary is a word that has been picked up by institutions of higher education, research foundations, and even popular culture as a way to articulate the need to move beyond the traditional disciplinary boundaries within which we categorize knowledge about the world. While disciplinary silos in higher education often reflect structures within which teaching and learning are engaged, we contend that critical pedagogy provides an opportunity for innovative thinking and creativity to emerge via Giroux’s (1981) critical notion of praxis. We discuss how Penny’s (2009) notion of deep interdisciplinarity can serve to guide course development in a way that enables any interdisciplinary course to achieve its inevitably unique goals. Deep interdisciplinarity, we contend, can enrich both critical and interdisciplinary pedagogies in two prominent ways: first, by expanding critical pedagogy’s focus to directly address instructor-instructor interactions as a significant in-class performance of critical reflexivity; and second, by enabling teaching and learning opportunities to reach into the places and spaces of everyday life. Using our own co-taught interdisciplinary class on urban public place and space as a provocative example, we advocate for finding opportunities to transform traditional institutional and disciplinary silos of understanding into unique learning environments situated on the “bridges” between them. Overall, we call for critical pedagogues to rethink their relationship(s) to interdisciplinary knowledge and for instructors in interdisciplinary classrooms to rethink their relationship(s) to critical pedagogy.
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erin daina mcclellan et al.Having the Last Word, but Losing the Culture Wars: Mainstream Press Coverage of a Canceled Evangelical Benediction.http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/75
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/75Mon, 15 Sep 2014 08:50:42 PDT
This study examines how mainstream news media reported the withdrawal of a popular pastor from the 2013 Obama inaugural ceremony. Louie Giglio was originally chosen for a role in the event but relinquished his position when focus was placed on a sermon he once delivered about homosexuality. Analysis of framing and sourcing of the stories raises serious questions about the role media played in reporting about this skirmish, which is clearly part of the larger culture wars.
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Rick Clifton MooreSeeing and Not Believing: Concern for Visual Culture in The Humanisthttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/74
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/74Wed, 28 May 2014 08:13:49 PDT
A recent study of a magazine distributed by a powerful conservative Christian group determined the organization showed strong concern for “visual culture.” The publication directed its readers on how to understand the seen world. The present study analyzes a periodical of an avowedly secular group to understand how they might manifest similar or different concerns. On the whole, the content of the magazine called The Humanist appears to indicate that visual culture is as important to agnostics as it is to theists.
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Rick Clifton MooreI Am What I Am? The Baller Identity Measurement Scale (BIMS) with a Division I Football Team in American Higher Educationhttp://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/73
http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/communication_facpubs/73Thu, 17 Apr 2014 16:16:28 PDT
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of culture and socio-cultural contexts on academic and athletic motivation of American male college football student-athletes. This study measured perceptions of student-athletes' athletic and academic identities tied to motivation for performance using a culturally relevant assessment tool, the Baller Identity Measurement Scale.
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C. Keith Harrison et al.